I was, just the other day, let to wander about freely in an area of town where a bookstore was known to be located. By the time I'd got myself free, I was the new owner of two fascinating books, one a photographic record of BC's sailing, fishing and shipbuilding during the transition from sail to steam, and the other the memoirs and photographs of a commercial fishing master, concerning his and his father's experiences in the Pacific cod fishery.
Light on the Water: Early Photography of Coastal British Columbia, by Keith McLaren, 1998, is a stunning collection of black and white photos taken between the 1850's and the 1940's, of ships, boats, harbours and shipyards up and down the coast. The quality of the duotone reproduction is outstanding, and each one is accompanied by concise and informative notes. Most have been culled from the archives of the Vancouver Maritime Museum and the Maritime Museum of British Columbia, and exist only as negatives. As example, there's two photos, one from 1858 (HMS Satellite) and the other from 1865 (HMS Sutlej), of the cannon on the decks of British warships, not the sort of thing of which there are many contemporary photographs. Sandwiched in between several pictures of the sumptious appointments of CPR liners is a shot of Asian immigrants in steerage. The link above is to one of those "look inside this book" Amazon things, and the picture they've chosen to highlight is that of the Pamir in 1946, slipping free of her tow past Cape Flattery at the entrance to the Juan de Fuca Strait.
It's listed online as out of print, but copies are stacked on the bargain table at the Book Warehouse on Granville Street.
Next up, Salt of the Sea: the Pacific Coast Cod Fishery and the Last Days of Sail, by Captain Ed Shields. Cod fishing in those days (20's, 30's, 40's) was done by handlining from one-man dories. Shields' family ran a typical concern of several schooners that, each season, loaded up with dories, fishermen and fish dressers, and sailed to the cod fishing grounds near the Alaskan penninsula, in the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. They'd stay out for several weeks, filling the holds of the schooners with salted-down cod caught and cleaned each day. As with most seasonal work, there were no days off save for those mandated by weather. It was hard work, and long hours, but there was at least no nonsense with underfeeding or -clothing or -equiping the workers.
Shields was an enthusiastic photographer, and many shots of daily shipboard life, as well as of sister schooners and dories on the water, have been included, as have a number of lively anecdotes of his own and others, and the joy he found in the quiet hours of the watch, hearing no sounds beyond the creaking of lines and planks, and salt breeze ruffling the sails.
The link is to the publisher's site, and doesn't include the pictures I would have chosen (dories! fishermen! schooners under full sail, with setting sun behind! inexplicable lack!), but there it is.
